A blaze of light now lit up the chasm ahead. The gallery in the rock became more open and led upward to a wide door cut out of the rock. Here the shaman of long ago had looked out on the frailties and follies of the world below him, serene, indifferent, meditating on the destinies of his people. Those times surely needed one wise man to sit apart and do the thinking for them all, for in this pueblo country the hostile and warlike Apaches had been fearsome invaders even before the time of the Spaniards. How long before that they and the Navaho had come down from the far north no man knows. But they found the peaceful and sedentary pueblo Indians an easy prey, and gradually they drove them all out of these cliff dwellings in the mountains to build themselves defensive villages on the high mesas of the Painted Desert to the north. Sid and Big John stopped at that natural doorway to look out below. Cañon Honanki lay a green-spired paradise below them. Bare, barren cliffs, streaked with color, rose opposite. A short way down the valley the horses could be picked out grazing placidly. The watchful Blaze lay near them and he rose and barked at sight of his master, his faint volleys echoing up the cliffs. “Now for Mr. Inaccessible--the cavate dwelling!” exclaimed Sid triumphantly. He led on upward until he came to a low door built in a stone wall laid up without mortar. Entering it, they saw that a round window cut through the cliff stone lit up the small cave room. Baskets, finely woven, of a texture and quality seldom seen nowadays, greeted Sid’s delighted eyes. There were shallow marriage and ceremonial baskets; bottle-shaped ones waterproofed with piñon gum, the kind now called _tus_ and used in medicine dances; large granary baskets still filled with dry kernels of blue, black, red, and white corn. A few black pottery jars, decorated with white lightning zigzags, stood in the corners. Strings of corn ears, red peppers, and dried onions, all musty and shriveled, hung from poles let into the roof of the cave. “The old bird was a rain-maker, all right,” said Big John, pointing irreverently at the zigzags on the jars and baskets. “Claimed he invented the lightning, all-same as Benjamin Franklin.” But Sid did not answer. Instead his eyes were riveted in sheer astonishment on the smooth rock wall of the cave, and he grabbed Big John’s sleeve and pointed, speechless with wonder. “Gorry!--Look there, John!” he finally found breath to exclaim. “Here is the _last_ place a fellow would expect to see the writing of a white man, I’ll say!” “Well, I’ll be durned!” growled Big John, peering at the letters with Sid. Written on the wall, in red earth letters and still as bright as the day they were made, was--a name! a Spanish name! FRA PEDRO DEL VACAS, 1680. “Can you beat it!” cried Sid, breathlessly. “Gorry, what a find!--Le’s see, John,” he went on excitedly, “1680 was the year of the big massacre, wasn’t it?”